Preschoolers bear brunt of income struggles

Not enough to go around for families in child care gap

By DEBORAH BACH, P-I REPORTER

Published
10:00 pm PDT, Friday, April 21, 2006

Joi Porter-Harris, 4, watches the last drop of milk dribble out of a pitcher as Nikyle Wilson, 4, at left, and Brandon Levinwood, 5, look on, at Seed of Life Center for Early Learning and Preschool. Studies have shown how critical early education is. less

Joi Porter-Harris, 4, watches the last drop of milk dribble out of a pitcher as Nikyle Wilson, 4, at left, and Brandon Levinwood, 5, look on, at Seed of Life Center for Early Learning and Preschool. Studies ... more

Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Joi Porter-Harris, 4, watches the last drop of milk dribble out of a pitcher as Nikyle Wilson, 4, at left, and Brandon Levinwood, 5, look on, at Seed of Life Center for Early Learning and Preschool. Studies have shown how critical early education is. less

Joi Porter-Harris, 4, watches the last drop of milk dribble out of a pitcher as Nikyle Wilson, 4, at left, and Brandon Levinwood, 5, look on, at Seed of Life Center for Early Learning and Preschool. Studies ... more

Photo: Grant M. Haller/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Preschoolers bear brunt of income struggles

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On paper, it would seem that Kelly Kincaid is in a solid financial position.

She makes $53,000 a year as a sales assistant for a cellular company, well above the state and national median household income. But after the $1,400 monthly she pays in child care, plus an additional $950 a month on her rented Bellevue house, the single mother's salary is spent.

"I constantly borrow against my 401(k)," says Kincaid, 32. "It's sad, because I feel like I'll never be able to retire."

Kincaid is among thousands of parents statewide who fall into the child care gap, making too much money to qualify for subsidized care but not enough to easily afford high-quality care. Such high-quality early education, experts increasingly emphasize, is critical to ensure that children start kindergarten on a developmental par with their peers.

Quality, of course, is not cheap. The average cost of child care for an infant in Washington state is $9,000 annually, but fees can easily run up to $15,000.

The most well-off families can afford high-end care. The poorest families can access resources such as Head Start, the federal program that combines preschool education with social services, and the state-funded equivalent, the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program.

But families in the middle often find themselves in a bind.

"Middle-income families and the working poor are really getting squeezed, because the tuition for a high-quality preschool is sometimes more or the same as tuition at a four-year state university," said Libby Doggett, executive director of Pre-K now, a Washington, D.C.-based national advocacy group. "You're looking at a family in the early years of their earning having to put out a lot of money for high-quality child care at a time when they don't have it."

In an effort to cut back her child care costs, Kincaid hired a 17-year-old neighborhood girl to look after her 7-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter for two months last summer. She saved about $800 a month, but said the lack of structure created behavioral problems in her children, and in the absence of regulated eating, her son gained 25 pounds.

"It's not worth it to me to sacrifice my kids' care," Kincaid said.

Small steps

The perception of child care as simply baby-sitting has given way to a recognition of the period between birth and kindergarten as a critical time for fertile minds. According to Pre-K Now, children who learn the names and sounds of letters before entering kindergarten are 20 times more likely to read simple words by the end of kindergarten than those who start later -- but one-third of middle-class children do not know the alphabet when they start kindergarten.

The gap continues, with 88 percent of children who are poor readers in the first grade remaining so in the fourth grade.

A kindergarten readiness study conducted by Washington State University and the State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction found that 75 percent of children in the state's lowest-income classrooms are not ready for school.

Step Ahead is the cornerstone of the city of Seattle's efforts to establish "early learning networks," which include help for parents with kindergarten enrollment, professional funding for teachers in pre-kindergarten programs, wage subsidies for workers and a home support program that involves weekly visits to help parents with educational activities and bonding.

The program is open to families who make less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level -- $39,600 a year for a single parent with one child and $60,000 for a family of four -- but is limited to families living within the city, and is the only locally funded program of its type in the state.

Billie Young, director of the city's early learning and family support division, said Seattle is unusual in its level of support for pre-K initiatives. But she acknowledged that there is a large unmet need.

"(Many) families just can't afford to live in Seattle at 300 percent of poverty, and I think that's true in other parts of the state as well," she said. "Certainly, families in Pierce County and Snohomish County and Spokane County are really struggling to make it, and to get their kids the kind of high-quality early education they really need to succeed in school."

Finding ways to make do

Need also is outpacing capacity for the region's low-income families. Only about 30 percent of children eligible for Head Start and the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program in King County are being served by the programs, leaving about 7,900 disadvantaged families without quality early childhood care.

Quita Smith, a single mother with a 7-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter, struggled to pay $855 a month for child care, which went up to around $1,100 in the summer since her son wasn't in school.

The last child care center her children were in, she said, was a licensed facility in Tukwila that often had soiled floors and bathrooms. "It was always dirty," said Smith, who takes home about $1,900 a month from her job working in medical records.

"This was a constant thing, and the only reason I kept them there as long as I did was because I couldn't afford to move them anywhere."

Smith now takes her children to the home of a retired couple, friends who have offered to care for them until they're teenagers. "It's been a real blessing to have a friend do it," she said.

For Caterina Tassara-Vaubel, the issue was more about quality than cost when she began looking for care for her 1-year-old son after moving to Washington. The Mill Creek mother hoped to enroll Ethan in an accredited child care facility near her home, but it had a lengthy waiting list, as did the child care center at her husband's workplace.

Tassara-Vaubel, whose background in child care advocacy makes her an informed and choosy customer, searched desperately for two weeks and ruled out places that either seemed too crowded or lacked children her son's age. She settled for a child care facility with a teacher she liked, but that teacher was soon replaced with another, and another. Tassara-Vaubel was able to get her son into the accredited facility after a year, during which he had about six different teachers.

"That is just awful for a young child who is trying to emotionally connect with the caregiver in the absence of the parent," she said. "I was thinking, 'Oh my gosh, I need to quit my job. There's no way I can do what I feel like I should be doing as a parent and also do my job.' "

Other states' approaches

General state revenues -- typically derived from sales, income, property and other taxes and fees -- remain the primary source for pre-kindergarten funding. Washington funds the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program through such revenues.

But changes in political leadership and competing funding demands can create instability for pre-K funding, and some states have turned to other means to create dedicated revenue sources.

In 1993, Georgia Gov. Zell Miller signed the Georgia Lottery for Education into law. Two years later, the state became the first nationwide to offer universal pre-K to all 4-year-olds. Two other states, Oklahoma and Florida, now offer universal pre-kindergarten services.

Tennessee also uses dedicated lottery funds to support pre-K services, as does North Carolina, whose "Smart Start" initiative provides early education funding to all of the state's counties. A public-private model launched in 1993, the program is administered by local partnerships throughout the state.

California led the use of dedicated "sin" taxes to pay for pre-K, levying a cigarette tax in 1998 that has so far raised $3.5 billion for programs focused on school readiness, according to Pre-K Now. Arkansas uses revenue from beer sales to help pay for its statewide early education program, while two other states, Kansas and Louisiana, have used money from tobacco settlements to fund their early education initiatives.

Despite the mishmash of accessibility and gaps in service, Doggett said there is plenty to be optimistic about. More than $600 million was invested in the system by state governments last year, she said, and both Republican and Democratic governors are making the issue a priority.

That includes Gov. Christine Gregoire, whose Washington Learns initiative is taking a comprehensive look at the state's pre-K-to-12 system and making recommendations for improvements. The project's Early Learning Council, a bipartisan advisory committee, has recommended establishing a Cabinet-level early learning department by July 1 that would be the primary agency for delivering public and private early learning services, which currently fall under various departments.

Young, of Seattle's Step Ahead program, commended Gregoire for including early learning in the initiative. "To be sitting at the table with K-12 and higher education is such an important, giant step forward that I don't think many states have made," she said. "Lots of states are talking (about it) but they're not there yet, and our state is there. I think that's incredibly hopeful."

Elizabeth Bonbright Thompson, executive director of the Washington State Child Care Resource & Referral Network, said Gregoire's backing lends critical support to legislators who have long been advocates for better early education.

"We're at the tipping point," she said. "Early childhood education has finally gotten to the point where people realize it's critical. Kids are not going to pass the seventh-grade WASL or the 10th-grade WASL unless they get an early start."